Ignorance of identities

Lois is, in some intuitive sense, ignorant of something concerning who
Superman is, and this ignorance both explains and justifies Lois's
believing of Superman that he is strong and that he is not
strong. (For more on the notion of believing of, see the
supplementary document on
The De Re/De Dicto Distinction.)
But what does this ignorance consist in; just what is it that Lois
doesn't know? Some want to say that she doesn't realize that Clark Kent
is Superman. She believes of Superman that he is strong
because she believes that Superman is strong (and she doesn't believe
that Superman is not strong) and she believes of
Superman that he is not strong because she believes that Clark Kent is
not strong (and she doesn't believe that Clark Kent is strong). This
only makes sense, however, if Lois doesn’t believe that Clark
Kent is Superman. But this is contentious and some participants in the
debate — in particular, Naive Russellians — deny it. (See section 4 on
The Naive Russellian theory.)
Why is this, you might ask? Well, according to Naive Russellians,
Lois's believing that Superman is Clark Kent just is her believing
that Superman is Superman, and surely she believes that.

We seek a description of Lois's ignorance that all parties of the
debate can accept. In the main body of the text, we claimed that Lois
is ignorant that the person she calls ‘Superman’ is
identical to the person she calls ‘Clark Kent’. While this
does not presuppose Naive Russellianism is false, we can see that this
unduly meta-linguistic way of stating what Lois is ignorant of is
inadequate. This is because there are ways of failing to have this bit
of meta-linguistic knowledge that intuitively do not constitute an
identity ignorance. For example, a two-year old doesn't possess the
meta-linguistic concepts needed to even entertain that thought. But
the child may not be confused about who Superman is. So, not knowing
that ‘Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent’ co-refer is
not sufficient for being ignorant of an identity.

One might be tempted to say that we should restate the meta-linguistic
ignorance in the positive. Instead of failing to realize the
co-reference, perhaps Lois’s identity ignorance should be said
to consist in her positively disbelieving that the person she calls
‘Superman’ is identical to the person she calls
‘Clark Kent’. (In general, it seems that we should
explicate identity confusions in terms of the active disbelieving of a
proposition as opposed to the mere absence of a positive belief.) But
this too can be seen to be inadequate, and for much the same
reason. Agents without the sophistication to disbelieve
meta-linguistic propositions can nonetheless be ignorant of an
identity. For example, a dog may bark at the person walking up from a
distance and then suddenly change its behavior, wagging its tail and
jumping around excitedly as it realizes that that person is its
owner. The dog suffered from an identity confusion. But it is highly
dubious that it disbelieved some meta-linguistic proposition. So,
identity confusions cannot be accounted for meta-linguistically.

Perhaps we can account for identity confusions not in terms of
disbelieving meta-linguistic propositions but instead great deeds
propositions concerning general traits and doings of the objects the
beliefs concern. So, we might say that Lois’s identity confusion
consists in her disbelieving that the person she works with is the
same as the person who saves her from falling buildings. This,
however, should not be conceived as a canonical way of being ignorant
of who Superman is. Paul may also be confused about who Superman is
but, not having thought of Clark Kent as the person I work
with, not disbelieve that the person he works with is the person
that saves him from falling buildings. If the great deeds strategy is
to be employed, we should say that, for each agent suffering an
identity confusion, there is some pair (or more) of sets of traits and
doings such that the agent disbelieves that the object satisfying the
one is the same as the object satisfying the other.

Those who reject Naive Russellianism and who are not concerned to
formulate an account of identity confusions that is neutral between
competing theories have an easier time. They can simply say that the
explanation and justification of Lois's believing
of Superman that he is strong and that he is not strong is
due ultimately to her disbelieving that Superman is Clark Kent.

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